Dive boat letters
With submersible letters , from a merchant submarine were transported tried the Bremen merchant Alfred Lohmann , the shipping company North German Lloyd and the German bank , the naval blockade of the opponents of the war in the First World War to subvert. To this end, they founded the Deutsche Ozean-Reederei (DOR) on November 8, 1915. The German Reich was very interested in trading goods and diplomatic mail with the American continent.
Dive boat letters
The imperial post allowed the German Insurance Bank on August 9, 1916, a stamp on the insurance amount and the postage to produce. The insurance bank organized the bank letters for the German Ocean Shipping Company (DOR) founded in 1915. On the first voyage of the commercial submarine Germany , in July 1916, to Baltimore , the DOR carried dyes, medicines as well as bank and diplomatic mail on the outward journey . It returned with rubber, tin and nickel, which the German war industry needed for several months.
On a second voyage in December 1916, the submarine was damaged in the US port. Another submarine, the Bremen , was sunk on the first voyage by the British navy.
Postal traffic
On December 25, 1916, the Deutsche Reichspost published a decree on the "transport of letters and postcards to overseas countries with German commercial diving boats." - Until further notice, normal letters without goods and postcards (without reply cards ) to the United States and to neutral countries in transit through the United States (Mexico, Central and South America, West Indies, China, Dutch -India, the Philippines, etc.) can be delivered to the post office under the following conditions. "
The letters to be transported had to be sent to the Deutsche Ozean-Reederei in a separate envelope with the label "Tauchbootbrief nach Bremen". A fee of 2 Reichsmarks was payable for this. The letters themselves had to be franked according to the fees of the Universal Postal Union in the first weight level with 20 pfennigs, those in the second weight level with 30 pfennigs. Special services such as registered mail or express couriers were not permitted. Insured letters continued to run through the insurance bank. The rules were not always followed.
The third mail transport, which was supposed to start on January 15, 1917, was canceled because the USA entered the war. The mail items were returned to the senders. They received the stamp “Back. Because of the suspension of the submersible mail traffic back to the sender ”. The transport fee already paid and the costs for the delivery of the "diving boat letters" were reimbursed. To do this, the envelope had to be handed in to the post office as a receipt, which it later left to the stamp trade. These diving boat receipts were never sent by post.
literature
- Infla report, episode 127, September 1982. Infla-Berlin eV Association for German collectors
- Claus Geissler: "U-200" - alias - the dive boat post story 1916/1917
Web links
- The World War on July 11, 1916 German Army Report